That’s what Web site BluWiki did late last year. That is, until Apple lawyers contacted the site’s owner – OdioWorks – waving a cease-and-desist order, a copy of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and threatening a lawsuit.

A free speech violation? Perhaps, but the DMCA prohibits disclosure on how to circumnavigate copyright protection technology. It’s how Hollywood protects its encrypted DVDs even though making a backup copy of your favorite movie easily falls into “fair use” territory. Breaking the encryption to get around copy protection means you violate the DMCA. No exceptions.

Now OdioWorks has filed suit against Apple, asking for a declaratory judgment that the discussions on BluWiki did not violate the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provisions nor infringe upon Apple’s copyrights. Assisted in its filing by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, OdioWorks also accuses Apple of trying to censor the BluWiki Web site.

“I take the free speech rights of BluWiki users seriously,” said OdioWorks owner Sam Odio. “Companies like Apple should not be able to censor online discussions by making baseless legal threats against services like BluWiki that host the discussions.”

The provision in the DMCA prohibiting people from distributing information about circumventing copy protection has been one of the more controversial aspects of the 1998 legislation.

Researchers have accused the copyright law of stifling information, with some even protesting that the law could mean jail time for what’s published in academic papers. Furthermore, describing something as simple as how to get around the copy protection technology that comes with some online music purchases – burn the tracks to disc, and then rip them like any other CD – just might be a violation of the DMCA, though no one has pressed it to that extreme.

“Apple’s legal threats against BluWiki are about censorship, not about protecting their legitimate copyright interests,” said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Fred Von Lohmann. “Wikis and other community sites are home to many vibrant discussions among hobbyists and tinkerers. It’s legal to engage in reverse engineering in order to create a competing product, it’s legal to talk about reverse engineering, and it’s legal for a public wiki to host those discussions.”

Please click here to view a PDF of OdioWorks’ complaint for a declaratory judgment and injunctive relief.